Que extraño: How Strange
by BrokenSlavegirl
Summary: I don't love you." Lust and jealousy trap Nini and Christian after the Tango. One chapter only.


_Que extraño: _How Strange

            "I don't love you."

            "I don't love you either."

            An animal bite brought blood and savage lust to my lips and I tried to bite him back, to shove my shoulder blades off the cold wall.

            "I don't—"

            "Shut up," his eyes milliseconds away, my fingers wrapped in his collar—

            "…Shakespeare."

            His ink-smeared palm lingered too long on my shoulder and a tiny shove threw tiny bits of glass on the floor, the last strap sealing me to half-innocence broken like my virginity so many years ago.  Glass shone in my eyes, too, played at by random light beams that would not let me fully hide but hid the deepest imperfections and smoothest cuts from where the glass fell.

            He looked strange, _muy extraño, _something so completely genuine against the gaudy red cot.

            Strange, too, was the fact that he brought back Jorge and his phrase, _muy extraña.  _

            Christian broke his vow of love as he pulled my broken dress further away from pointlessly covered skin and I remembered when I had been strange and sweet despite the fact that I cut you with my sharp tongue and pierced you with the kindest laugh.  

            His hand tracing my breast… 

            _Que extraña tú eres._

            "Who told you that you could touch that?" I asked, remembering that my legs were spread across him, my weight welcome as sore muscles refused to rest from the tango.  His face neared my skin and I moved to slap him.

            His cheekbone slid beneath my thumb and my back beneath his innocence as my kiss became his, unseen mouths pilgrims to purge each others sins but unblushing.  He'd written it wrong…

            Jorge had thought my kisses strange, burning in intensity but detached and chilly.  I smoldered for him or at least I tried, giving him the first taste of hot blood.

            The Spanish sun was high and heat leaked through every mud tile.

            No.  It was France, cold and night when his hands slid down my body to push away incessant skirts and a heartless mouth moved to taste prized glass that shattered illusions that hung about the remote exterior.

            "No, Shakespeare.  Not tonight; you 'aven't the time." 

            My fingers pried his loose of my hips and pulled them over my head, bringing a row of buttons into view.  My skirts were back and covered strong thighs that flipped him onto his back.

            I didn't even look at him once his clothes had glided down the wall and rested in a pile, just turning on my back for him to unlace me.  He never saw the bruises that Jorge had always kissed, remnants of my rebellion against corsets and what they wanted to see.  All he saw was passion, neither love nor hate but something intoxicating that pulled my legs apart.

            I thought of whalebone that dipped beneath tender flesh, controlling women, as I rolled over to taste his wasted excitement, a flash of obsession that traveled down both our spines, not poetry or love or even masquerading as such, porcelain masks unpainted and broken beneath soft dancing shoes.  He didn't know what he was doing, didn't know what sin he was committing and didn't know how to stop.

            I was on my back again, a pathetic mouse out of her glass cage, but he didn't want to play.  My beating heart and terrified squeaks only bewitched him.

            "We haven't got the time," he grunted, his hands spread and pinning my arms as the stroke of death came, and I was afraid for what seemed like the first time, so many dress rehearsals but only one performance as I threw myself into the act only to find that the drama was my own.

            "_Poetry," _ I gasped as my innocent fingers wrapped around his wrists and hips and back melted into fluid motions.  My breath was gone; I could not breathe but with him.  "Poetry, Shakespeare…"

            His lips brought careless, loveless warmth to my neck and his palms quitted my forearm in a trail or pure, death-predicting black ink.  My wrists were on his hidden ribs, my pulse dissolving close to him disinterested heart.

"I always thought

That love conquers all;

Was always taught

That the pure never fall."

            Oxygen choked us as I gasped with him, bodies falling slowly as he searched for words.

"I see I was wrong,

that jealousy cuts;

I tried to be strong

I don't believe in trust."

            He almost seemed to sob for a moment, almost moaned as my hips were confused, unable to keep up, confused by lust that touched them, too.

            My fingernails pushed beneath his skin, broken to break him, to show him how love kills us all.

            _"Gállate."_

The sun had faded an eon ago as I sold myself to the night, no longer showing the blood he had loved to look lifeless, hair too dark and skin too light.

            _"Tú eres…"_

            He bled, too, and I was almost surprised.  I would have expected that tart to have murdered him already with her stupid coughing and brainless kisses.  I was choking, gasping, not thinking about what I was doing and feeling only the ecstasy and him inside of me.

            I screamed and released the passion that burnt me and dried as cuts left by falling shards of glass.  Crimson smeared from beneath my fingernails and across him back.

            He didn't care who heard either and didn't care that people would know.  I was just a whore, after all, but I could feel his regret and almost loved him for a moment.  He was thinking about her and didn't see me either.  We both new lust that hid, unquenchable, from hot sex.  For a moment I let myself think I understood him.

            Before I knew it, he was getting dressed and I was being left again.

            "What the fuck just 'happened, Shakespeare?"  His blood defiled my face as I wiped glassy eyes.

            "I don't know."  The door rattled, a death rattle as I laid back, kohl adultered into gray streaks on broken porcelain.

            _Que extraño._

AN:  I wanted to note that, in Spanish, titles are not capitalized beyond the first word, so that's not a mistake.  _Gállate _is like _shut up._  This is basically a sex-scene practice and rather spontaneous.  Any comments are welcome—please comment, in fact.  I thought Nini needed a past and that she's too often passed off as a señorita herself.  I think she's more of the kind who would become something she thought would get her somewhere, but I also think she's quite tragic.  Alas, I'm not too fond of Christian.  Review, review…


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